Music of Catalonia

The music of Catalonia comprises one of the oldest documented musical traditions in Europe. In tandem with the rest of Western Europe, it has a long musical tradition, incorporating a number of different styles and genres over the past two thousand years.

History

Among the earliest references to music from Catalonia date to the Middle Ages, when Barcelona and the surrounding area were relatively prosperous, allowing both music and arts to be cultivated actively. Catalonia and adjacent areas were the home for several troubadours, the itinerant composer-musicians whose influence and aesthetics was decisive on the formation of late medieval secular music, and who traveled into Italy and Northern France after the destruction of Occitanian culture by the Albigensian Crusade in the early 13th century. The so-called Llibre Vermell de Montserrat ("Red Book of Montserrat") stands as an important source for 14th-century music.

Renaissancepolyphony flourished in Catalonia, though local composers never attained the fame of either the Spanish composers to the South and West or the French composers to the North. Joan Pau Pujol wrote four books of polyphonic masses and motets in honor of the patron saint of Barcelona, St. George.